April 11, 2012 posts

Using a smartphone while shopping to find better deals or to look up product reviews is now pretty mainstream. There are some interesting differences between how Hispanics use their phones while shopping compared to the average U.S. consumer, though. While observing 15 Hispanic smartphone owners in Los Angeles and conducting a nationwide survey of 500 Hispanic smartphone users in late 2011, White Horse and digital advertising agency Sensis noticed that Hispanic users often prefer to shop with friends and family members – a use case that most mobile shopping apps currently ignore.

The study found that Hispanic users generally care less about reading product reviews while they are shopping and are more interested in the social experience of shopping with others. Indeed, 68% of Hispanic smartphone users in this survey said that they prefer to shop with at least one more person when buying expensive products. Even when they are just buying everyday items, just under 50% said that they would rather go shopping with a family member or friend.

The report’s authors argue that the current crop of mobile shopping apps is too “single-centric” for these users. Shopping list apps, for example, should effortlessly sync between different users. When shopping for expensive products, the users in this survey told White Horse, being able to get advice from friends is also more important to these shoppers than having access to product reviews. Indeed, just 38% of Hispanic mobile shoppers in this survey said that they had accessed product reviews on their smartphones. That’s a very small number, given that 68% of all U.S. mobile shoppers say that they have done this.

Overall, Hispanics are more likely to use the mobile web than the general market mobile consumer and are also more likely to own smartphones in the first place. Currently, however, most mobile shopping apps don’t really address the way these users shop. Because of this, the study recommends that these apps start adding more social features like automatically alerting friends when you scan a QR code inside a store.

A part of the Sellout Project, the half-hour, one-act play will focus on Latino awareness issues.

Through satire, the play aims to start conversations about the treatment of Latinos.

“The play pretty much shows all the common stereotypes of Latinos,” said Susana Baker, the play’s director and a senior majoring in telecommunication arts. “You have the maid, the rebel bandit type, the ghetto Latino girl and several others. It is a comedy, but the satire points out the stereotypes in the play.”

The main character of the play, Sancho, runs a business selling Latino stereotypes like one would sell used cars. As he runs through each character for sale, a different commonly held Latino stereotype is highlighted.

The play is an adaptation of “Los Vendidos,” written by Luis Valdez in 1967.

“A lot of the themes were dated and wouldn’t translate well,” Baker said. “The most important thing is to make sure the art is relevant to UGA students and community members, so it didn’t make sense to perform it as written.”

With updated jokes and a “Saturday Night Live” style, the play hopes to connect with the audience through humor — but move viewers enough to make a change.

“The goal is definitely to start dialogue about issues,” Baker said. “It’s an opportunity for people to talk about putting people in boxes and stereotypes.”

Baker said the message of the play works on an individual basis to create movement.

“If people are changing on an individual level because of seeing the show,” Baker said, “that’s really all the change we need because from there anything can happen.”

But “The Sellouts” is only one part of the whole Sellout Project, which also features filmed video messages and frequent blog posts about recent events pertaining to Latino awareness. The project aims for awareness and education about ongoing Latino issues, which is seeks to accomplish through many smaller actions.

“Action starts at an individual level,” Baker said, “so if someone comes to the show or reads the blog and thinks about it enough that they change an action, maybe someone will notice or they will talk to someone about it.”

Among the many originalities of the performance, the play with a message will be short, funny, live — and outdoors.

Griselda Nevárez started working at Hispanic Link News Service, a national Hispanic newswire based in Washington, D.C., two months ago.

Nevárez, 22, was named a 2012 Chips Quinn Scholar, a program that places a dozen journalists in news organizations across the country to help improve newsroom diversity.

We sit down at her desk in the crowded Hispanic Link office in Logan Circle, which is bursting with stacks of paper and stuffed binders. The fresh-faced reporter talks excitedly of covering national Latino issues. On that particular day, she was working on a story about Rep. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and recent protests over Rubio’s stance against the DREAM Act.

“I really like the whole national aspect of covering Latino issues,” Nevárez said. “I just love being around politics and I try to find a Hispanic angle to stories and represent the Hispanic issues that are important.”

Nevárez is from Arizona, a border state known for its tough immigration laws. Growing up in Arizona, she said she was exposed to many people who passed judgment on Latinos without taking the time to learn about the issues important to them.

“Seeing how people are just very close-minded sometimes, it motivated me to want to become a journalist and represent the Hispanic community and voice their issues,” she said.

A typical day for Nevárez starts about 9:30 in the Hispanic Link office at 14th and N streets NW. After sifting through e-mails and press releases, she’s usually bustling around the District interviewing leaders of top Hispanic groups, including the National Council of La Raza and the League of United Latin American Citizens.

Nevárez publishes about three stories a week and says that with every article, she tries to give a voice to the Hispanic community, something she thinks mainstream media doesn’t do very well.

“Latinos in general are the group that has less coverage. They only think that Hispanics care about immigration and that’s it,” she said. People usually think it’s just immigration, but it’s a wide variety of issues, including education, health care, the elections and voting.”

The hardest part about working for a Hispanic news outlet is overcoming the stereotype that she’s only trying to report one side of an issue, according to Nevárez.

“People look at our name and automatically assume we’re for one group, and it’s not like that. We really do work on that because just because we have Hispanic in our name, we don’t want to come off as supporting a certain group,” she said.

Another challenge is the use of the Web to get Hispanic Link’s message out. Hispanic Link’s Web site is bare and updated infrequently. The newswire has a small local staff — a handful of full-time reporters, interns and editors — and relies on freelancers across the country. The organization does send out a weekly publication, but Nevárez said if the Web site was updated more, it would reach more people.

Still, she said she believes that as long as Hispanics remain underrepresented in news coverage and newsrooms, ethnic media papers will exist to serve the community in one form or another.

“That’s why Hispanic Link exists, to give a voice to Hispanics and to represent those issues important to them,” she said.

Barriers remain in Latinos’ ability to purchase healthier dairy and meat options in tiendas—Latino-focused grocery stores—according to a new study.

The study, published recently in Public Health Nutrition, compared the availability, quality and cost of healthy and unhealthy foods in 10 tiendas and 15 supermarkets in San Diego County, Calif.

Researchers found that tiendas were smaller, charged more for a gallon of skim milk, and offered less lean ground beef than supermarkets.

However, they also found that tiendas had similar fresh produce offerings at lower prices.

“These results highlight the potential that tiendas have in improving access to quality, fresh produce within lower-income communities,” the researchers concluded. “However, efforts are needed to increase the access and affordability of healthy dairy and meat products.”

A new survey by The Libre Initiative of U.S. Hispanics and Latinos tells a tale of shrinking confidence in the next generation of Hispanic Americans to be financially better off. A majority believe the persistent adverse economic conditions, the current unsustainability of government spending, government cronyism and the unfettered regulatory overreach are taking the country in the wrong direction and making the American dream less attainable.

Political sentiments aside for now, of fundamental concern is the negative outlook Hispanics now have of achieving the American dream and the shrinking prospects they have of opening up a business someday. Alarmingly, a majority (51 percent) say it is harder to open a business in America today compared to 4 years ago, and the data also shows that a majority (52 percent) now fear that the next generation will not be able to achieve the American dream. Similarly, a majority of respondents (51 percent) believe the country is headed in the wrong direction.

Regardless of how you parse the numbers, these results are bad. Nothing contributes more to the proposition of American exceptionalism than steadfast optimism and a resolute belief that its citizens will be rewarded for working hard, saving and investing, and taking entrepreneurial risks. But when that belief erodes because political spenders punish those that work and reward those that don’t; when professional politicians increasingly hinder small business owners with onerous regulations that limit creativity, innovation, and expansion; and when the current Administration punishes job creators by rejecting badly needed projects like the Keystone XL Pipeline only to gamble away hard earned taxpayer dollars on a bankrupt California energy company like Solyndra; the can-do spirit of its people begins to erode as well.

Of particular necessity is the assurance of open competition in the marketplace, the freedom of businesses to hire and fire workers, and the need for greatly reduced government interventions that have served to distort true prices in the market. That is, to avoid a future of debt, doubt and despair, we must restore the principles of economic freedom that reward hard work and accountability. Anything short will only increase the anxiousness and disquiet beginning to spread throughout the Hispanic community.

It all marks back to the dismal job market that nose-dived in 2007, and the Administration’s ineffectiveness to deliver on promises it would reverse the trend. Currently, the Department of Labor figures show Hispanics suffer from an official unemployment rate of 10.7 percent, which is higher than the national rate of 8.2 percent. The government reported the economy added 120,000 jobs in March, just half of the jobs that were expected. Of course, the personal economic ruin suffered disproportionately by the Hispanic community as a result of the housing market collapse, and having the highest poverty rates of any other group, has not helped restore optimism.

Although the results show President Barack Obama retains an overall 58 percent approval rating among Hispanics, his concern should be that much of this support is due to mainly to his own personal popularity, as the same survey indicates the majority of those polled do not approve of the way he has managed the economy, high gas prices, and runaway government spending. Fifty two percent of Hispanics, for example, disapprove of the job President Obama is doing in handling the rise in gas prices and just 34 percent approve.

Furthermore, a full 85 percent of Hispanics say they are “very” or “somewhat” concerned about Washington’s current levels of spending and debt, according to the survey (the poll has accuracy rate of plus or minus 4.5 percent). Despite President Obama’s overtures for increased spending, a 54 percent majority of Hispanics say the higher priority of the federal government right now should be a reduction in spending to shrink the deficit while just 36 percent say more spending is the answer.

Today, significant doubts remain of the economy improving anytime soon, and with regard to the community’s ability to weather further continuance of the dismal economy. The Case Shiller index of home prices has dropped 36 percent since June 2006. This collapse in home prices - coupled with the massive number of Hispanics suffering loan foreclosure of their homes - leaves many unable to turn to home equity loans and refinancing as options that gave them a boost in the past.

Not surprisingly, the new data, commissioned by The Libre Initiative, also found that 51 percent of Hispanic respondents identified jobs and the economy as America’s most pressing problem, and only 27 percent indicated their individual condition had improved in the last 4 years.

It would seem President Barack Obama does not appear to suffer significantly from the Hispanic community’s dismal view of America’s current economic condition as 59 percent say they are currently planning to vote for President Obama in the upcoming presidential elections while only 31 percent say they will be voting for the Republican candidate.

My sense is Hispanics have been patiently waiting for the turnaround because they genuinely like President Obama and truly desire he do well. They have also bought President Obama’s line that Republican obstructionism has had more to do with continuing stagnation, than his own policies. All the same, the Administration’s disappointing results and inaction on immigration may well prove to be the President’s Achilles’ heel in what promises to be the mother of all elections.

To put it bluntly, when the unemployment level of the American labor pool remains above the 8 percent mark for an unprecedented 50 straight months, it is not enough for the sitting president to say these results persist despite “sound” policies presumably advanced by his administration. As the election heats up, the Hispanic electorate may be persuaded to pin the continued stagnation directly to the President’s own disastrous policies as the root cause of the systemic failure that have kept our economy from rebounding.

I say disastrous because his policies have focused on increasing spending and growing government on the backs of small business owners and hardworking Americans struggling to make ends meet. This approach does not grow the economy, it grows government - it also grows the burden on the American people to sustain it. The poll indicates this approach does not have the support of the Hispanic community as 85 percent said they are very concerned (56 percent) or somewhat concerned (29 percent) about the federal government’s current level of spending and debt. Only six percent of Hispanics said they are not too concerned, and just eight percent are not concerned at all.

What is clear is that Hispanics believe our leaders must set aside their own political interests, stop dividing Americans on the immigration issue, and work to advance real solutions, real jobs and real gowth. And even though a majority of Hispanics now believe that the future will not improve if we continue on the current path, they also know that decline is not inevitable.

In this election cycle, Hispanics will be looking to support liberty-oriented candidates and policies aimed at achieving personal economic security for their children, for themselves, and for every American.And isn’t that what the American Dream is all about?

*The poll was conducted by The Tarrance Group. The findings include data from a sample of N=500 Hispanic voters (in English and Spanish) throughout the country. Interviews were conducted over the telephone from March 13-19, 2012, and the margin of error for this type of sample is =/- 4.5%.

Analysis gives leaders in statehouses and communities across America data and practices to help accelerate college completion among Latinos

WASHINGTON, April 10, 2012 - To inform state-level action on Latino college completion, Excelencia in Education today released 50 separate research-based fact sheets detailing the current status of college completion among Latinos in each state.

"The United States cannot retain its international competitiveness unless we improve Latino college completion. While there are things we must do in Washington to advance this cause, this is an issue that requires leadership at all levels - from school boards to statehouses across America. True to its unique ability to provide actionable data and to engage a multitude of stakeholders to accelerate Latino college completion, Excelencia in Education has given leaders in all 50 states information they can use to engage the talents of Latino students and make their states and our country stronger." said U.S. Rep. Charles Gonzalez, chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

"We are committed to bringing together stakeholders across America and empowering them with the information they need to advance Latino student success in higher education -- from statistical data to empirical research, and from tactical analysis to promising academic practices," said Sarita Brown, president of Excelencia in Education. "These 50 state fact sheets will put all of that into the hands of state, institutional, and community leaders who need it."

Each fact sheet includes state-level data on the population, representation among K through 12 students, educational attainment of adults, multiple measures of equity gaps in degree attainment, and examples of promising practices across the country for improving Latino college completion. To access the fact sheets, visit: http://www.edexcelencia.org/eaf/50states/

"We are working diligently to achieve President Obama’s goal of making America the country with the highest proportion of college graduates by 2020," said Eduardo Ochoa, assistant secretary for postsecondary education, U.S. Department of Education. "This new analysis makes it clear, we must accelerate Latino college completion to achieve that goal."

"The state-level data on Latino college completion show that today's investment, or lack thereof, in Latino academic preparation and degree attainment can have a compounding effect on state populations, economies, and communities in the near future," said Deborah Santiago, Excelencia in Education's co-founder and vice president for policy and research. "State policymakers as well as institutional and community leaders have opportunities to improve their educational attainment, economic strength, and community engagement by investing now in the academic preparation and achievement of Latinos."

While the detailed data varies from state to state, several trends emerged from Excelencia's research:

Latinos are much younger than the national and state populations overall.

Nationally, the median age for Latinos was 27 compared to a median age of 40 for White, non-Hispanics in 2010. An age gap between Latinos and White-non-Hispanics is consistent within all states. The states with the lowest median age for Latinos (22 years) are Iowa, North Dakota and South Dakota. Closely following these states with a median age for Latinos of 23 years are Arkansas, Idaho, Kansas, Maine, Montana, Nebraska and Oklahoma.

Latinos are a larger share of the K-12 public school population than they are of national and state populations overall.

Nationally, Latino youth represented 22 percent of the K-12 public school population and 15 percent of the U.S. population overall in 2010. Nine states have a K-12 public school population that was greater than 20 percent Latino in 2010—New Mexico (60%), California, (50%) and Texas (50%), this includes Arizona (41%), Nevada (38%), Colorado (28%), Florida (26%), Illinois (21%), and New York (21%).

Latino adults have lower degree attainment levels than other groups.

Nationally, about 20 percent of Latino adults had a postsecondary degree compared to over 35 percent of all adults in the U.S. in 2010. Nine states had more than 25 percent of Latino adults with postsecondary attainment in 2010—Alaska (26%), Florida (31%), Hawaii (30%), Maine (36%), New Hampshire (33%), South Dakota (26%), Vermont (41%), Virginia (28%), and West Virginia (28%).

The graduation rates for Latinos are lower than that of White, non-Hispanics.

Nationally, the gap in degree attainment between Latino and White, non-Hispanic cohorts of first-time, full-time students was about 14 percent. The widest gaps in graduation rates between Latinos and White, non-Hispanics was in Connecticut (19%), Delaware (15%), Illinois (15%), Iowa (18%), and Washington (16%).

The equity gap in undergraduate credentials per 100 Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) students between Latinos and White, non-Hispanics is smaller than other completion metrics.

The gap in degree attainment between the Latino and White, non-Hispanic cohorts per 100 FTEs was about four percent nationally. The states with the highest equity gaps in degree attainment between Latinos and White, non-Hispanics with this metric were Arkansas (15%) and Iowa (11%).

The equity gap in degree attainment between Latinos and White, non-Hispanics was highest for undergraduate credentials per 1,000 adults with no college degree.

The gap in degree attainment between the Latino and white cohorts per 1,000 adults with no college degree was about 25 percent. There were 11 states with equity gaps between Latinos and White, non-Hispanics for this metric higher than the national gap—California (27 percent), Arizona (31 percent), Colorado (35 percent), Delaware (29 percent), Georgia (31 percent), Illinois (36 percent), Iowa (38 percent), Kansas (36 percent), Kentucky (30 percent), Utah (36 percent), and Wisconsin (34 percent).

"Earning a college degree is a critical step toward personal economic success, and the economic success of America is bound tightly to the economic success of our growing Latino population," said Anthony Carnevale, director of the Center on Education and the Workforce at Georgetown University. "The more leaders at the state level know about and understand Latino college completion in their respective states, the better equipped they will be to implement policies that move us forward."

"This new research makes it clear that states can't hope for a better future for all their citizens if they don't succeed in leveraging the talents of their Latino residents," said Dennis Jones, president of the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems. "By showing state leaders how they compare with other states and to national goals, the information presented will help them be more strategic in the decisions they must make to close the attainment gap."

Latino College Completion in 50 States is a project of Excelencia's national initiative, Ensuring America's Future by Increasing Latino College Completion, which brings together leaders from seven sectors to develop and provide specific tools and information to accelerate Latino degree attainment while serving all students. Begun in 2009, Ensuring America’s Future is supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Lumina Foundation for Education, the Ford Foundation, the Kresge Foundation and W. K. Kellogg Foundation.